Mykola Halushko

In the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election, Halushko was the head of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's campaign in Ukraine's 97th electoral district, located in Kyiv Oblast. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election four months later, Halushko was the candidate of Servant of the People, Zelenskyy's party, in the 97th electoral district. At the time of the election, he was an independent.^[1] He ultimately won with 37.75% of the vote, defeating European Solidarity candidate Oleh Ivanenko and incumbent Holos candidate Pavlo Rizanenko, who gathered 16.00% and 9.81% of the vote, respectively.^[3]

On 29 August 2019, Halushko was formally inaugurated as a People's Deputy of Ukraine. He joined the Verkhovna Rada Human Rights Committee, and became a member of Servant of the People in November 2019.^[1] Halushko later left Servant of the People in September 2020, claiming that all seats in his electoral district had been sold and the party was insufficiently committed to fighting corruption, though he has remained a member of the party's fraction in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament).^[2]

In December 2021, Ukrainska Pravda released body camera footage from a police officer who had pulled over Halushko for violating traffic rules in Kyiv. The footage, which dated to a year before its release, showed Halushko insulting the police officer for pulling him over, referring to the police force as "morons" and asking "How can you pull over the car of a People's Deputy?"^[4]

The press service of Servant of the People defended Halushko following the incident, claiming that former Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov had leaked the video in response to Halushko voting for his removal. Davyd Arakhamia, head of Servant of the People in the Verkhovna Rada, further claimed that the entire incident may have been engineered by Avakov in response to the vote.^[5]

On 19 November 2021, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention summoned Halushko, accusing him of understating the money in his financial declaration by ₴1.45 million (approximately US$38,988), comprising donations he had made to his parliamentary election campaign and a land plot in the village of Hoholiv.^[6]

The anti-corruption non-governmental organisation Chesno has additionally accused Halushko of collecting pay without working, noting that between January 2022 and May 2023, he missed 46% of sessions of the Verkhovna Rada.^[2]